Meta

Month: November 2014

As promised I’ll present you one of the cakes (or “Torten”) I baked for my Mum’s 50th birthday. A what a “Torte” it is…with raspberries (my absolutely favourite berries), light low-fat quark (I used this one) and still so sweet and creamy – a fruity dream! The sponge is fluffy and soft and not at all dry owing to the frozen raspberries.

To create this recipe I combined several recipes and my own ideas to find my perfect Himbeerquarktorte. And I came as close to perfection as I could, believe me!

Even though it will take you a bit of time, the recipe is not at all complicated and the result is definitely worth it! Why not bake this for one of your relatives’ of friends’ birthday? Or maybe because you’ve had a good day? Or because…well, actually I don’t think you even need to come up with a reason. Just do it! 😉

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Line the base of an 8-inch round cake pan with baking parchment. Put the frozen raspberries into a medium size bowl. Add vanilla sugar to the frozen raspberries. Set aside.

Separate the egg whites from the egg yolks. Put the egg yolks into a large bowl and put the egg whites into a medium sized bowl.

Add sugar, one pinch of salt and warm water to the egg yolks. Whisk until light and fluffy. Add zest of 1/2 lemon. Set aside.

Add a pinch of salt to the egg whites and whisk with an electric whisk until stiff. Put the whipped egg whites on top of the egg yolk-mixture.

Sift the flour and ground almonds on top. Gently fold in and combine, trying to keep the volume.

Pour the mixture into the cake pan and level into all the corners, smoothing the top with a palette knife if necessary.

Bake for 20-25 minutes in the middle rack of the oven until golden brown on top. It might be advisable to cover the sponge with aluminium foil after about 15 minutes. Test whether the sponge is done using a knitting needle (or something similar).

Take the sponge out of the oven and let it cool down covered by a kitchen towel. Remove the baking parchment and cut the cake horizontally into two layers using a knife and a thread (“Omas Fadentrick”).

Put the bottom layer on a serving plate and cover it with the frozen raspberries. If they’ve already lost a bit of juice you can pour it over the sponge, too. Put the round ring (of the cake pan) around the sponge.

The last weeks have been so incredibly busy! Besides university and work we celebrated my Mum’s 50th birthday two weeks ago and today Dobby’s birthday with a lot of fabulous cake…ohh it was so good!

But before I share these recipes with you (I’ll just need a wee bit more time to prepare these for you…) I’ll show you something much smaller but equally delicious and cute: “Hearts on Fire” (originally: “flammende Herzen”).

I’m not quite sure why we call them “flammende Herzen” because at least mine don’t resemble hearts at all…but hey, they resemble flames, so let’s leave it at that.

You can make them in different shapes and sizes – just as you like it. They’ll taste great anyway. 😉

Add one egg after the other and finally 4 tablespoons of milk. Continue to whisk.

Mix flour and baking powder, sieve and add carefully.

The batter shouldn’t be too runny but well malleable. Put it into the piping bag and pipe little flames or rosettes on the baking parchment (lying on a baking tin). Tip: Pipe always two flames mirror-invented such as to make them fit perfectly. When making rosettes pipe the upper part nice and high and the lower part quite flat.

Bake in the middle of the pre-heated oven for 10-12 minutes until the edges of the flames and rosettes are slightly golden Brown.

Take them out of the oven and let them cool down.

Whisk the apricot jam. Spread the jam onto the upper and lower part of the flames/rosettes. Then, assemble the two parts.

Melt the couverture on a bain-marie and dip the flames/rosettes into the molten chocolate. Let them cool down and dry completely before serving.

(recipe after “Wiederentdeckt: Die Schätze aus Omas Backbuch”)

Tip: If you want to make the Hearts of Fire in a vegan variation, check out Lucia’s version here.

_________________________________

To get a printed version: Download the pdf.
(Both English and German versions available!)